Stuck on You
by Elicitation
Summary: A crappy assassination attempt on the three most influential Al Bhed world leaders lands Gippal, Rikku, and Cid stuck together in an undisclosed location for an equally undisclosed amount of time. For safety reasons, of course. Obviously.
1. Lead in the Liver

**(…. I'm such a hypocrite.**

**Chapter Summery: In which Gippal is rudely awoken, livers are possibly shot, and the stage is set.**

**Don't own 'em.)**

Despite popular belief, Gippal was not, in fact, a light sleeper. Both Baralai and Nooj could attest to that, seeing as they roomed with him while in the Crimson Squad, along with another man whose name was not nearly as important as their own. However, the reason he is even mentioned in this story is to prove that Gippal, again, was not a light sleeper; for this unimportant man could snore loud enough to wake High Summoner Braska (may he rest in peace) on the Farplane. And while Baralai and Nooj, and sometimes Paine when they had to share a tent or a room (whatever lodging the higher-ups felt they deserved) had to struggle to sleep while Nameless snored to high heavens, Gippal would sleep like a baby, sometimes adding his own nightly noises to the serenade.

Now that you know that Gippal could sleep through a hurricane (he hadn't, but he had slept through a sand storm once on Bikanel and Baralai told him that they were similar, except that hurricanes were a bit more wet), it should be somewhat obvious as to why he did not immediately wake up when something clanged in the hallway outside of his room. After all, he lived and worked in a temple made of _stone_ where they built _machines_ all day. Odd clanging sounds were no stranger to him. This, however, was not the clang of metal against metal, or stone against stone, or even stone against metal. This was the clang of someone who had tripped and knocked something over, and this was made obvious by the small curse from the hallway after the aforementioned clanging sound was made.

Gippal, for his part, snorted and rolled over in his sleep.

Thankfully, some of Gippal's workers actually _were _light sleepers, and so after the clanging and the curse, a door opened slowly to reveal Alla, one of the female employees of the Faction. She blinked against the dull blue light of the quietly humming electric current that lined the sides of the walls and tried to focus her weary eyes long enough to see what had made the noise. What she saw shocked her (not in the literal sense, as the electric current wasn't quite that strong), and she quickly ducked back into her room to peek out of her cracked door.

Outside her door, just a few feet from the boss's room, were two people dressed entirely in black, complete with hoods and gloves and masks. They were dressed like some of the bandits from the road to the Moonflow had decided that playing ninja would be the Coolest Thing Ever, and had so dyed all of their clothes black. They seemed about as smart as those bandits, too, because they were whispering frantically to each other and pointing to the door to Gippal's room. Once she had looked over their clothing, Alla realized that one of them carried a wicked-looking machina that she thought she might have seen once when those fiends came out of the temple. Needless to say, it was most certainly a weapon, and she highly doubted that they were going to give it to her boss as a present.

Backpedaling into her room, Alla glanced around for her gun and found it sitting on top of her dresser. She drabbed it quickly, then darted back for the door and glanced back out into the hallway, pausing to make sure her weapon was loaded. They were still out there, and they seemed to be trying to pick the lock on the door. She hesitated. Gippal was kind of an ass… but then again, he _did_ sign her paychecks. She pushed open the door and dropped into a stance, rifle at shoulder-level as she aimed.

" Dinh ynuiht cmufmo," she commanded, not moving as she saw both of them tense. The one who was bent down near the lock twisted to look at her over his shoulder. He opened his mouth, and her eyes narrowed. She had a bad feeling about this..

Without warning, the one standing (the one holding the freaky machina) reached into his pocket with the speed of someone who'd just casted Haste on himself and flung out what she recognized as a smoke bomb. A large plume of smoke emptied itself into the hallway, and Alla managed to fire a shot in their direction before the smoke filled her lungs and she started coughing. Just before she began to gag and wretch, she thought she heard a cry of pain.

While Gippal is a heavy sleeper, one simply does not sleep though the duel bang of a smoke bomb and a rifle going off just outside one's doorway. He jerked awake, throwing back his sheets and grabbing the handgun stashed under his pillow before scrambling to his door, trying and failing to not trip over the pair of jeans in his floor. As soon as he reached the door he threw it back, bringing up the gun and preparing to shoot. He stepped back immediately, coughing and swiping at his… eye. He waved a hand into the smoke, mentally willing the offending obstacle out of his hallway and out of his temple. Pulling his shirt up over his chin and holding it above his nose, he stumbled back out.

Numbly he registered the coughing and gagging a few feet to his right, and the pained moan to his left. At least whoever else was in this smoke was just as hindered by it as he was. He reached out blindly to the direction of the moaning, and fumbled until his hand met fabric, which he promptly fisted and yanked back on, grabbing the person and dragging them into his room. He left the room again; the hand that was still holding the gun was now also running along the wall to the right, and his other went back to holding up his shirt. As he reached the coughing, he grappled blindly for a moment before hitting something solid. The person tensed up and began to flail, but he managed to grab a hold of some hair and pulled the struggling person back into his room as well.

He flicked the light switch with his gun hand and (after blinking dumbly a few times at the sudden light that assaulted his eye) closed the door before any more smoke could get in. He stepped back to survey his captives.

The coughing one turned out to be one of his workers. Alla, he thought. He recognized her, but his half asleep/adrenalin-pumped mind couldn't quite wrap around something that trivial at the moment. All he needed to know was that she wasn't a threat.

The other, however, looked like a ninja reject. Like one of the bandits or a Youth League member decided that black was now It. The poser was hunched over in pain, clutching at his side and hissing the hiss of someone who had just gotten shot.

_I'm going to be cleaning blood off of my wall again_, Gippal thought in a somewhat detached manner.

Alla had finally stopped coughing, thankfully without vomiting all over his floor, and she looked around warily once she could see straight. After seeing Gippal she relaxed, then turned to glare at the other person who had been dragged in. It seemed like her wild shot had gotten lucky, and the machina that he'd held had been dropped in favor of crushing both hands to his side to stop the flow of blood.

Gippal stepped over to him, bent down, and pulled off the mask.

The man had a dark tan, probably either from Kilika or Besaid. His dark brown hair suggested the former. He had high cheekbones and a slightly chiseled face, and was not at all unattractive. His Kilikan-gray eyes were surprisingly lucid, and they narrowed in disgust at Gippal. His lips pulled into a grimace, baring teeth that were stained over with blood. The bullet had probably hit the liver.

Gippal glanced down at the machina, and his eyebrows rose slightly. That was an experimental weapon that his men had assembled themselves, and only four or five had actually been made since the first one had proven to be unsuccessful during the fiend attack. It was very powerful, but it had a kick that could blast the user back twenty feet if it wasn't handled correctly, and was deemed too much of a risk in the current state to be used. It was defiantly an assassination attempt; with a weapon that strong and them outside his door in the dead of night, what else could it be?

" Why," he asked evenly in Common, " did you try to kill me?"

The man glared at him, making small hissing sounds and looking serious for someone who was in such a lame get-up. He opened his mouth to reply, then let out another deep hiss and a gurgle as blood climbed up his voice and into his mouth to leak slowly over his lips.

Gippal waited patiently, then turned to look at Alla as she cleared her throat. She coughed once, then rasped, " There were two, sir, in the hallway. One was picking the lock and the other, that one I guess, had the weapon. I heard them talking in the hall." She stopped to cough again, holding one hand over her mouth.

The boss nodded, then with a glance down at the gasping man, turned to open the door and look out into the hall. By now the smoke had cleared slightly so it was visible, and several other workers were cautiously sticking their heads out their doors to investigate. No other ninja, however, and Gippal returned to his room, ignoring the curious employees.

He glared down at the young man who was obviously dying, or at least in tremendous amounts of pain. If the bullet really did hit the liver, there wasn't much they could do for him anyway.

" I'll ask again, then. Why did you try to kill me?"

The man coughed up some more blood, then let out a shaky smirk.

" Fucking Al Bhed scum," he hissed out, reaching up with one hand to wipe at his mouth. It only succeeded in smearing the blood, however, and he returned to pressing against the wound. Gippal let out a silent snarl. An assassination… just because he was Al Bhed? While he wouldn't put it past a Yevonite zealot, something just seemed wrong about it. He felt like something just didn't add up.

But this man was bleeding all over his floor, and if they didn't get him medical attention soon then he was going to be dead before they could properly question him. He ran a hand through his hair and resisted the urge to scratch at his eye patch before turning to Alla. The young woman looked up at him questioningly, ready to act. Again, he signed her paychecks.

" Get someone to help you take him to the medics antechamber. Try and see if they can't save him." Hi lips pulled back into a grimace. " I still have some questions, and 'fucking Al Bhed scum' doesn't seem very informative to me."

Alla nodded, then crawled over to the man and gripped him under the arms, heaving him up and dragging him out of the room, barking for help once they were in the hallway. Gippal sighed uneasily, then blinked as someone new, another worker, barged into his room.

" Sir! We just got two Commsphere messages, one from Bikanel and the other from the bridge of the Celsius!"

Something in the bottom of his stomach dropped, and his mind went numb. " The C-Celsius? Is Rikku okay?" He assumed the message from Bikanel would either be from Cid or Nhadala, but he was leaning more towards Cid.

He let out another sigh, this time in relief, when the worker nodded. " Yeah, it was Anikki who did the actual calling, but he said Rikku was alright, just a bit shaken up." Gippal began to pace, then walked out of his room. The worker jumped, then followed.

" So Rikku was attacked, too?" Gippal asked, striding in the direction of the communications room. Shinra was as lazy as he was brilliant, and had installed only one Commsphere at the Djose temple for them to use in one of the antechambers. The worker nodded, struggling to keep up with his boss. " Yeah," he confirmed, " and so was Cid."

Gippal paused to think, then shook his head. " What about the High Summoner and her husband? Was Yuna attacked too?" The worker replied in the negative, and his employer sighed once more. He seemed to be doing that a lot, lately.

" Right. Well. Let's… let's see if we can't get back in touch with Cid's girl, and get down to the bottom of this."


	2. Swivel Chairs and Plot Developement

(Ah, here we go again

(Ah, here we go again.. I've tried to make chapters long, but I just can't seem to do it. oO Also, a bit more dialogue here than in the last chapter. Mostly because I love the relationship between Paine and Gippal. Somehow I can just totally see them kicking back and exchanging snarky comments to each other.

**Chapter Summery: In which Gippal continues to sigh, Rikku vomits on a rug, and speculations are cast on the motive behind the assassination attempts.)**

Well, she didn't _look_ to stressed out.

At least, that was the impression that Gippal got at first glance. She (the she being Rikku) was currently sitting on a swiveling stool at the bar in the cabin of the Celsius, crunching idly on what appeared to be dry cereal with a jug of milk on the bar beside her. Every now and then she'd swallow a bite of the cereal, then reach over and take a swig of the milk, and repeat the process. Part of him wasn't surprised. Even back on Bikanel she'd had… odd.. eating habits.

He was currently talking to Paine, who was seated on a stool as well, at a slight angle in the foreground of the picture, which made him think that the Commsphere was probably settled on the bar beside her. She, like Rikku, appeared to be eating breakfast; however, she had opted for a bagel, making considerably less noise. Between the two of them bounced Anikki, who seemed unwilling to leave his sister alone even for a minute, much to the distress of both females.

Paine chewed for a second, thinking over how to explain the nights (or morning, as the case may be; he had no doubt that the area over Besaid was on a slightly different time zone than the one over Djose) events in a satisfactory manner.

" When I came onto the scene after hearing Rikku shriek--"

" I did not shriek! I… I yelled daintily! In a slightly high-pitched voice!"

" Of course you did, Rikku. After I heard her," here she paused to glance at Rikku, who stuck her tongue out at her over her bowl of cereal, " …_ yell daintily_, I ran to her room to find out what was wrong. She's lucky my room is in the same hallway as hers is. Anyways, by the time I got there she had already kicked him out of her room--"

" Literally!" Rikku threw a fist in the air, narrowly avoiding knocking over the jug of milk. Anikki dodged her hand with a glare.

"--Yes, literally. Sadly, Rikku was to busy _daintily yelling_ her head off to actually do anything to him, and by the time I got close enough to stop him, he'd already ingested a poison capsule. So we couldn't get any information off of him."

Gippal sighed softly and rubbed his temples.

" The man that my worker shot is still in extensive care. Potions and magic can only do so much for wounds that spot-on." He looked proud for a second. He had some good, if not slightly lazy, employees. Then he sobered up and looked at Paine through the Commsphere. The silver-haired woman was looking back at him, trying to ignore the loud argument between Rikku and her brother over Rikku's inability to not spill the milk (which she had done somewhere along the line, apparently, while he and Paine were talking).

Paine paused to think about it for a moment.

" So.. pretty much the only real answers that we're going to get are going to come from Cid and his attacker or attackers. Assuming, of course, that he didn't just kill them."

Gippal blinked at her, scratching at his chest absently for a moment. " You mean you don't know if Cid is actually okay?"

Paine shook her head. In the background, Rikku had shoved Anikki away and was spinning around on the barstool, chewing her dry cereal and the same time. The both ignored her. They were kind of used to it.

" No," the warrior answered, " Anikki called you guys first, at the insistence of Rikku. We figured that something might have happened to you guys, too. After that we called Yuna to check in with her, and then you contacted us again. We haven't really had the change to get in touch with him."

" Nhadala tried to call us at about the same time you guys did."

Gippal looked around the antechamber for conformation. One of his smarter workers, Bellun, nodded at him. " Call from Bikanel exactly one minute before call from Celsius," he informed, turning to look at his employer from over a machina he was tinkering with. Gippal nodded and looked back at Paine.

She sighed. At least he wasn't the only one doing it.

" Whoever they are, they're smart, despite the stupid way they're carrying their plans out. Conducting a simultaneous global assassination plan would have been brilliant, if they hadn't underestimated the power and support of their targets." She rubbed the bridge of her nose as Rikku began to spin even faster behind her. " This must have taken months of planning. Although we should consider the competency of the people they, whoever the actual collective 'they' are, chose to actually go through with it. If it were serious, they wouldn't have sent such idiots." She scratched her chin in thought. " Or maybe they _meant_ to do that, so we would underestimate them. That was probably only an attack to trick us into thinking they're weak fools." Her ruby eyes widened in surprise.

" Which means.. which means that that probably wasn't the real attack. You guys are still in danger, though I doubt they'll try anything this early."

Gippal stared at her silently.

" So… what exactly does that mean, Dr. P?"

She sighed once more, not even looking up when Rikku stopped spinning and rotated at the hips woozily for a moment, then yelped as she slid off.

" It means that if we're assuming that these guys are actually serious, and if they actually want you three dead, then they probably haven't brought out the big guns yet. The question, though, is _why?_ Are they waiting for us to put up our guard? Are there any other motives behind you just being Al Bhed leaders? Because that's the only connection I can see."

Gippal held up a hand and began to tick them off on his fingers. " Cid, obviously, because he's the real official leader of the Al Bhed. He's been trying to restore Home for years. Me because I'm the leader of the Machine Faction. It might not be a world power like New Yevon or the Youth League, but my little business is now a big thing with lots of employees. And Rikku because she's saved the world twice."

There was a loud wail of " PAINE!!" from the floor of the cabin on the other end, then a muffled wrenching sound as the contents of Rikku's still-spinning stomach made their way back up for a reunion with the Outside World. Paine and Gippal shared a glance over the Commsphere.

" I'm not going to feel sorry for you because you knew that would happen and you deserved it," the warrior called over her shoulder with a grimace as Rikku vomited even louder and Anikki cackled with laugher. A voice from off screen called out with a thick accent, " Mish Rikku! Are you alrighst?"

Paine rolled her eyes. " She's fine, Barkeep, ignore her."

Bellun turned in his chair to tap Gippal's shoulder. " Our other line has been trying to get in touch with Bikanel, but we can't. It looks like the Commsphere might have gotten destroyed. It's all blue and stuff." Gippal raised an eyebrow. " It's always blue."

" Bluer than normal, then. I can't really make out anything they say when I try and connect, but I can see blurry movement. Maybe it just went offline. I can try and figure out how to change the frequency, but honestly; I'd rather not mess with that Shinra kid and his inventions. I heard that when they salvaged the first Commsphere for parts during the Vegnagun crisis, shorty blew his top."

Gippal put his head in his hands.

" Hey Paine? I'm going to disconnect and see if I can't figure out how to get in touch with Cid. You try to on your end as well, okay?" The silver-haired woman nodded, and reached towards the screen. It flickered for a second, and then died.

He sighed loudly.

His employee looked at him oddly. " You sure do sigh a lot, sir."

"…. Bellun."

" Yes sir?"

" Shut up."

**(Rikku's plight is inspired by a misadventure of my own. I did that, and puked. A lot.)**


End file.
